Mozambique: Business leaders want to meet government about wave of kidnappings
DW / Safe-conduct
Mozambicans will henceforth only be able travel to South Africa with a full Mozambican passport, after authorities there said that they will no longer accept the certificate of emergency – the ‘safe-conduct’ – as a valid travel document.
Now, Inhambane citizens are complaining about the price of acquiring a full passport.
Rungo Cuambe is a photographer in Inhambane, but his business is getting worse and worse. Cuamba’s main line of work is taking photographs for passports and emergency certificates – many of them for citizens who want to travel to South Africa.
But in 2017, the South African authorities stopped accepting some Mozambique-issued documents, and business in Cuambe’s commercial establishment abruptly declined.
“The Mozambican government is issuing documents knowing that South Africa does not accept them,” he said. “The government should know which is the best document. I used to get six to seven people a day, but now it’s only one or two,” he complains.
Passports are expensive
Osvaldo Ramiro is a young Massinga resident who wants to abandon his car-wash occupation and head to South Africa to work in the mines, but he now faces difficulties.
He does not have the money to pay for a five-year passport, which costs 2,400 meticais – more than thirty Euros. “Not yet,” he says. “The problem with the cost is it’s too high. I still don’t have enough for a passport.”
Like Ramiro, many Mozambicans preferred the emergency certificate to the ordinary passport. The certificate is only valid for three years, but it is almost 30 Euros cheaper.
In migration services at the height of school holidays and festive seasons, it was common to see crowds of people applying for passports and emergency certificates, but since South Africa stopped accepting emergency certificates, applications have come down.
Reduced passport demand
Without giving concrete figures, Rosângela Vilanculo, spokeswoman for the Provincial Directorate of Migration in Inhambane, confirms that “[there was] a reduction in the demand for ordinary passports, travel documents for miners and emergency certificates.
[…] This year, they did not open the stations, because the numbers fell. The teams in Zavala and Massinga were withdrawn.”
Now, only children can enter South Africa on emergency certificates.
Andrea da Luisa has been living in South Africa for several years, and on a visit to Mozambique, she took her three-year-old daughter’s certificate. “I’m looking for an emergency document for South Africa. It’s for my daughter,” she says.
Emergency certificates are still valid for other countries. Januário Chissico wants to study abroad this year, so he had photos taken. “I’ve had photos taken so I can get an emergency passport to Zimbabwe,” he says.
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